Trewin Restorick, CEO and founder of Hubbub, discusses the charity’s freshly-announced partnership with Ecosurety, which will see series of collaborative campaigns aimed at taking a “fresh look” at environmental communication
To an outsider, the world of compliance around Producer Responsibility Obligations and Package Recovery Notes is baffling and confusing. As you start to peel back the layers of complexity, you realise that it is crucially important to recycling in the UK – but few are brave enough to fight their way through the bureaucracy.
For the charity Hubbub, it was an unexpected privilege to be introduced to the compliance agency Ecosurety. Here was a company that understood the need to go beyond compliance if the UK is to reach its maximum recycling potential. More than that, they wanted to shake-up the system, shining a light of transparency into the darker corners, use the funding available to engage more people in recycling and to boost the amount of recycling taking place within the UK.
The values of Ecosurety chime with those of Hubbub. We want to take a fresh look at environmental communication, we want to collaborate with like-minded organisations and we want to test new approaches that can achieve a long-term significant impact. It looked like it should be a match made in heaven but would the chemistry work between the two organisations?
With English household recycling rates stagnating and an air of economic uncertainty hanging over the Brexit discussions, we believe this partnership is timely.
We decided to go on a test date and in October will be launching our first collaborative campaign, along with retailers, to persuade UK households to empty their cluttered kitchen drawers of used batteries, taking them back to the many recycling points that exist.
The campaign shows the value of partnership. Ecosurety can provide the financial resources, the technical expertise and are investing in a new UK battery recycling facility meaning that in future more batteries can be recycled domestically, rather than being exported to Belgium. Hubbub can bring to the table our connections with retailers developed through campaigns such as the #SquareMileChallenge, our communication expertise and our ability to reach consumer audiences.
Both Ecosurety and Hubbub have sufficient confidence that the relationship will help us achieve our respective aims that we are delighted to announce a formal partnership for 2018 and beyond. We have one clear aim – to boost UK recycling through new collaborative initiatives.
With English household recycling rates stagnating and an air of economic uncertainty hanging over the Brexit discussions, we believe this partnership is timely.
Next year will see the launch of two further campaigns, with the first looking at plastic. Both Ecosurety and Hubbub see this as an open collaboration and hope that others will become involved to help deliver our three aims. Manufacturers who want to promote more recycling within the UK can become part of Ecosurety’s compliance programme. Retailers, local authorities and voluntary can become messengers; encouraging their customers, constituents and members to take part in the campaigns we develop.
Together we can show that a collaborative approach can make a significant difference to the impact that complex compliance schemes can deliver.
